The miserable

By: Luis Gonzales Posada - 06/12/2024

Nicaraguan dictator Daniel Ortega continues to ruthlessly repress the Catholic Church as an institution, its prelates and parishioners, in a country where 50% of the population professes that religion.

He recently deported the president of the Episcopal Conference, Bishop Carlos Herrera, the third to suffer this illegal sanction. Before that, he banished Monsignors Isidro Mora and Rolando Álvarez, from the dioceses of Siuna and Matagalpa respectively, the Auxiliary Bishop of Managua, and expelled the Apostolic Nuncio, Monsignor Waldemar Stanislaw Sommertag, with the argument that the Vatican "was part of the fascist conglomerate."

Since 2018, 75 clerics have been arrested, 35 stripped of their nationality and 245 forced into exile or banished from the Central American country.

In this sordid context, let us recall the inexplicable expulsion of the nuns of the Missionaries of Charity order, founded by Mother Teresa of Calcutta, who ran a nursery for abandoned children and a home for destitute elderly people, as well as the confiscation of the monastery of Trappist nuns, who had to move to Panama.

Catholic radio stations and media outlets were closed down and their equipment confiscated by the government, as were the bank accounts of various congregations.

In his insane retaliatory policy, the dictator has banned more than 3,600 processions and a few days ago promoted a constitutional reform establishing that “religious organizations must be free of all foreign control,” which projects that new purges are coming.

The question is why this systematic attack? The answer is because from their pulpits and through the press, priests protested against the brutal repression carried out by police and paramilitaries on May 30, 2018, Mother's Day, when entire families participated in a march against the deplorable social security system, bringing together half a million demonstrators in the streets and squares.

According to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights of the OAS, police and paramilitaries killed 212 people, and other humanitarian organizations put the figure at 325.

Many protesters took refuge in the Metropolitan Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception and in other churches in the interior of the country. There were reports of soldiers and mercenaries bursting into churches with guns in hand to arrest those who hid in their premises; events that provoked protests from the Episcopal Conference of Nicaragua.

The totalitarian system, however, continues to advance unchecked. Recently the Legislative Assembly has approved several reforms to its Fundamental Charter, which do not exist in any country in the world. The most striking is to establish a system of co-presidents (Ortega and his wife Rosario Murillo), adding that if one of the two dies he will be replaced by a vice president they designate and who will undoubtedly be their sixth son Laureano Ortega Murillo, a 42-year-old fop who shows off a Porsche 911 and luxury Rolex watches valued between 130,000 and 250,000 dollars.

The constitutional reform, amended twelve times since 2007, which included indefinite re-election, now extends the mandate of the head of state from five to six years and introduces the figure of co-presidents, who will coordinate the legislative, judicial, electoral, municipal and regional government bodies, as well as the control and oversight systems; in other words, they replicate the North Korean model of the Kim dynasty.

The drug of power has perverted Ortega, a Sandinista who is about to turn 80 years old. He was president from 1980 to 1985 as head of the Government Junta and elected at the polls from 1985 to 1990 and from 2007 to date; a total of 27 years, which he now intends to extend for another 6 years and those who oppose him are arrested, killed or join the exodus of a million Nicaraguans living abroad.

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